In the Sydney Morning Herald Elizabeth Farrelly is lamenting the loss of eternity: 'we no longer see ourselves as part of eternity', she writes, 'but simply as the poor, bare, forked animals that Darwinian modernism bequeathed us. Our allotted span is all we have'. This is bad in various ways, Farrelly believes, and those ways seem to include materialism, egalitarianism (being 'the refusal of excellence'), populism and even the stripping out of 'all mystery, depth and texture' in church.
However, the most telling thing is Farrelly's conclusion:
At this rate it may soon be last supper time for us all. But what's worse, if we're reducible to primates, is how hard it is to care.
What a poor posing of the alternatives: either eternity or else we're mere primates and who gives a damn? Yet that's her reduction, and a lot of people who don't think they'll make eternity do give a damn. They do because of, oh, Shakespeare and Austen and Damon Runyon; and Bach and Thelonious Monk and Bob Dylan and Hank Williams; and the good things people have done for love, and love itself; and every kind of human beauty and courage and dignity; and walking in the sun, and spending good time with friends; and (hey, why not?) Lionel Messi's second goal last night. Humanity is not impoverished by the loss of eternity unless by your own impoverishing insistence.
